


they will find you acting on your best behavior (everybody wants to rule the world)

by stardustgirl



Series: Hollow Castles [5]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Angst, Child Marriage, Cultural Differences, Dark, F/F, Hair Braiding, Healing, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Ketsu: okay but. what if you did something else instead that'd hurt him worse, Lesbian Sabine Wren, Mandalorian Culture, Political Alliances, Politics, Prompt Fill, Purple Prose, Revenge, Sabine Wren Has Issues, Sabine Wren Needs a Hug, Sabine: I'm gonna kill Gar, Sabine: go on, Sharing a Bed, Symbolism, Vignettes, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020, in this fic and id apologize but i dont want to, sabines a horse girl send tweet, theres so mucH, this fic is really sad im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:49:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26950927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustgirl/pseuds/stardustgirl
Summary: The kingslayer of Kalevala takes her throne, and makes it her own.(Prompt fill for “Support” and “Carrying” for Whumptober.)
Relationships: Gar Saxon & Sabine Wren, Ketsu Onyo & Sabine Wren, Ketsu Onyo/Sabine Wren
Series: Hollow Castles [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953304
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	they will find you acting on your best behavior (everybody wants to rule the world)

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Panic Attack (brief), Mutilation, Non-Consensual Arranged Marriage, Referenced Past Domestic Abuse, Implied/Referenced Past Sexual Assaults of a Child, Child Marriage, Implied/Referenced Mind Control

She’s braiding Karsenaar’s mane when it hits her, all at once.

He won’t get the chance for justice that she did.

She tries to keep herself steady, inhales deeply, intertwines her fingers in the strands of her stallion’s mane to the point where it’s carving marks into her skin. They’ll fade, she knows.

The ones in Tristan’s mind won’t, she also knows.

She turns away from her horse, forcing herself to the stall door. She should go...go look at treaties. Go look at petitions. Go do...something. Go do anything to be productive.

She unlocks the stall door, slips out, and turns to—

She stops.

Ketsu stands there, a bucket in one hand. Her brows furrow briefly. Sabine shifts her weight uneasily, suddenly unsure of herself.

“Your Highness,” Ketsu says, tone neutral.

“I...please. Not...not that. Not here.”

“Why? Did—“

“I don’t want it to be like that between us.”

Ketsu is quiet for a long, long time. And then, softly, she says, “I saw your horse was back.”

Sabine smiles faintly. “Yes.”

“Tell me how the trip was?” Ketsu invites. Sabine’s smile wavers, but she dips her head anyway.

On their way back to the keep, Sabine tells her. She simply leaves out the part about Tristan, about the ring, and about the winter. She’s been telling selective truths for a long time now, and it won’t hurt anyone to keep doing it.

* * *

She’s more openly close with Ketsu, now, more so than she was when Tiber was still a king and she was still his child queen, used to demonstrate his power. She finds herself leaning into Ketsu’s touches after a while, too, finds herself aching to soothe the starvation caused by an absence of humanity. After so long with mostly Tiber’s harsh hands, and then the fall and winter in Krownest where she was stuck in a state of in between most of the time and thus unable to differentiate between Bo’s hand and that of her dead husband, it’s nice.

Sabine falls asleep at her desk one day, trying to sort through the complicated wording of the Kalevalan legal system enough to answer a petition from a baron, and then wakes to find herself in her own chambers, tucked beneath the blankets by someone who didn’t need to force her there.

This happens more and more and, often, Ketsu will be sitting in a chair at the window, only to nod and rise when Sabine wakes up before asking if she needs anything. What she _really_ needs is for Gar to be killed horribly by one of her mothers without fear of retribution, but instead she asks; “How did you get me in here?”

“I carried you,” Ketsu says, shrugging as if it should be obvious. “How else?”

She smiles.

* * *

She’s working at her desk one night, far too late, when Ketsu enters the study with barely a knock.

“You should sleep.”

Sabine doesn’t know how to tell her that she can’t, that every time she closes her eyes she sees the dangerous grin Tiber wore like a crown at the wedding, that every time she closes her eyes she sees the terrified look in her brother’s eyes as he struggled to find a way to articulate the wrongs he’d suffered at far too young an age.

Instead, she says, “I’m not very tired.”

Ketsu hums, says, “Do you want help carrying these to your room, at least? So you can go to sleep easier, after.”

Sabine nods, and somehow she ends up holding the papers while in Ketsu’s arms, rather than the two of them splitting the weight. It’s nice, she thinks, because the way Ketsu carries her is gentle, isn’t the bruising grip Tiber had as he pulled her to the bed—

Ketsu doesn’t do that, either.

Instead, she sits beside Sabine on the bed, lets Sabine curl into her as she reads over the papers. She strokes through the strands of Sabine’s hair, slowly weaving them together into a loose braid.

“I need to cut it,” Sabine murmurs absently, turning over one of the reports.

“You don’t like it long?”

“It’s...a thing, sort of, in Krownest at least. When you first enter battle, first draw blood, first become a warrior, you...you cut it.”

“A queen _and_ a warrior, then? You’re full of surprises, Sabine,” she says, a smile in her words. Sabine hums.

“Not a warrior, though, not yet, well….I...was supposed to be both, but....”

Ketsu’s hands still, halfway through the braid. “I’m sorry,” she says after a long moment.

“You weren’t the one who did it.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t want to help.” Ketsu releases the braid, shifting forward slightly so Sabine can look into her bright eyes, now tinged with a sadness she doesn’t deserve. Being Queen isn’t a sentence, it’s just her fate. So why can’t Ketsu understand that?

“Sabine, just...just tell me how I can help. Tell me what I can do to...to do _anything._ ”

Sabine looks at her for a long, long moment before sighing. “I don’t know.”

* * *

“It’s summer.”

Ketsu steps up beside her, and Sabine can tell she’s trying very hard not to look at her. “Is there a difference in the seasons here?” she replies dryly.

Ketsu chuckles softly. Sabine didn’t mean it as a joke, but, well, if it makes her happy….

“Will you be heading north?”

At this, Sabine _does_ look at her. Ketsu’s gaze is still on the glimmering sea beyond the city, her expression betraying nothing.

“Is there...is there a reason to?”

“I just...I just thought you would want to see your family. Forgive me, that was—”

“It wasn’t. I just….”

_I haven’t thought about them in a while, not without a cockatrice’s shadow over them._

_I’m not sure if I’m ready to go back._

_I don’t want to paint the target on their backs larger than it is._

All these excuses rush through her mind, and Sabine exhales slowly. “I may,” she says at long last, turning to look back out at the sea. “It’s too hot to stay here very long, anyway.”

She hears Ketsu’s quiet laugh as she says, “I think they would agree with you, Sabine.”

Unbidden, an image of Tristan in the traditional clothes—and colors—of House Saxon rises in her mind, and she nearly feels the urge to vomit. Her hand on the railing tightens, just enough for herself to notice, not enough for anyone else to, though. Or so she thinks.

Ketsu raises a hand to the railing tentatively, places it just so so that their fingers intertwine.

“You don’t have to go, if you don’t want to.”

Swallowing hard, Sabine says, “I want to. But...I don’t think I can.”

Ketsu nods, and they reach a fragile silence.

* * *

Her brother-in-law comes back home, that fall.

He brings with him his retinue—probably scared she’ll pull a knife on him the same way she pulled one on her husband, the same way he pulled magic on her brother—and she tells Ketsu she doesn’t care if he knows about the two of them.

They eat dinner that first night all together, her and Ketsu and Gar and the stone shadows that follow him and whisper about her. When she calls Ketsu up to sit beside her, allowing her to take her seat first at her right before she follows suit, the whispers rear to a roar louder than the waves against the cliffs.

Sabine stares her brother-in-law down the entire meal, waiting for his expression to falter. But, to her vague annoyance, it doesn’t.

He matches her steel with ice.

And on his way to his rooms for the night, he stops by her, murmuring in a voice too soft for anyone else to catch, “I would be worried someone else knew the meaning of you allowing your _servant_ to sit down before you.”

She ends up staring at the ceiling for most of the night, hoping none of the members of their tenuously-shared court understand northern traditions.

(She’s never hoped they’ve forgotten about House Kryze as much as now.)

* * *

If it weren’t for Ketsu, Sabine would have put a knife through Gar’s back a hundred times by now.

Instead, she is measuring out a few drops from a vial sent in secret from a messenger in the west, pouring it cautiously into a much smaller vial of her own as Ketsu stands guard at the door.

It’s a private dinner, that evening, with just her, him, and a couple of guards, one allied with her claim to the throne and one with his.

And, of course, a thick blanket of tension.

She reaches for his cup before he can say something, pouring it the same as her own and relying on the heavy drape of her sleeves to hide the vial she pours in. She passes it to him, keeping her expression carefully neutral as he drinks.

“You Wrens have an aptitude for that, you know,” he says, raising an eyebrow. The veiled comment, hidden enough to bypass the guards’ notice, only serves to strengthen her resolve. She, in turn, plays the innocent child that he still thinks she is, before he ever remembers that she is a kingslayer.

“For?” she asks politely.

Gar holds her gaze for a long moment before dropping it, shrugging. “No matter.”

They each know exactly what the other is doing, and she honestly finds herself enjoying the challenge of digging shallowly along his pride so as to escape notice. It’s easier, she thinks, to wound it than he would have her believe.

The dinner continues similarly, each of them trading cloaked daggers throughout. Finally, near the end, she can tell the vial is starting to do its work. He tires, slips up a bit, and as he rises to retire, she offers to help him reach his chambers. He studies her carefully, but it’s a tired expression, and he seems to find nothing of fault because he agrees and dismisses the guards.

They reach his rooms, and she is quickly growing cold, cold, cold and remembering the way Tristan had looked at her as they found him in Bo-Katan’s study.

And then Ketsu is there, in the corner, as they force Gar’s hand onto his desk, as Sabine pulls the enchanted knife she’d flashed at him during their departure from Krownest that spring, and she warns him to rethink his decisions next time he sets eyes on a member of her family as she brings the knife downward across his fingers.

She ensures Ketsu’s safety that night, and for all the nights afterward until Gar returns to Sundari, by inviting the girl into her chambers. She feels more comfortable in her own skin, with her hair long, when it’s Ketsu’s gaze following her, Ketsu’s fingers winding their way through her locks. She finds the nightmares are less, too.

(And if they stay together even _after_ Gar is away, who would be the first to say that Sabine minds it?)

* * *

It is autumn, and it is Tristan’s _Gaituur._

And Sabine is weeping.

Ketsu sits beside her on the bed, holding her to her chest and murmuring soft reassurances.

“What if I can’t protect him again?” she whispers.

Ketsu answers, “You will.”

Sabine hiccups, hoarse, and murmurs, “And what if Gar…?”

Ketsu is quiet for a long, long time. And then, she says, “We’ll keep him too busy to leave.”

They begin the next morning, Ketsu going, hooded, out into the towns at the far reaches of Kalevala and whispering of a kingslayer who wears a crown of her own making in the throne upon the hill. Sabine cuts her hair for the first time, staring at herself into the mirror for a long, long time afterward.

And when Gar returns, his loyal followers have turned on him, all too caught up in the Kingslayer of Kalevala and her crown, and yet, he still cannot prove her part in the murder.

And when she writes Tristan, wishes him a happy _Gaituur,_ she does not say she wishes he would come visit. She does not say she wishes she would come visit. She only says that she is working, that everything he will hear her do is for him.

That night, she pulls out the circlet Tiber had altered for her, with its native starbirds and then the added cockatrices circling, and she snaps the wings off the latter.

There will be no silent stone, here.

* * *

She takes her first dance at the winter festival’s ball with Ketsu, letting herself fall into step with the falconer as whispers from the court surround them. Afterwards, she kisses her, too, in full view of the court and of Gar.

She does it to say _this is what your brother tried to ruin,_ she does it to say _this is what your brother tried to break,_ she does it to say _this is what your brother tried to kill._

She does it, primarily, to say _this is what your brother could not crush._

The starbird has not flown since before Sabine could walk, she knows, but she will live to see it again.

And House Saxon, she knows, will not.

**Author's Note:**

> *Disclaimer we’re aware that cutting one’s hair is against traditional Confuscianism but , this is only loosely inspired by it so.


End file.
